Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Homeworlds

  • FromJoshua Kronengold <mneme@xxxxxx>
  • DateThu, 9 Apr 2009 09:39:22 -0500
David L. Willson writes:
>Has anyone played a bunch of games with the good/evil mechanic?  Tell
>me it's great, and really adds to the game.

I've played a few, but overlal prefer Sinister and Binary homeworlds.

It's not really a Werewolf mechanic--G/E is probably best as a 4
player mechanic, with Good players trying to prove they're good and
ID evil players, whereas evil players try to get into a position to
eliminate someone.  It is, however, much better than Open Homeworlds.

>Speaking of huge groups, has anyone played Homeworlds with more than 4?  How'd it go?

Erg.  Why?

>What about teams in a four-way game?  Like Euchre or four-way Hamster Rolle.  I haven't tried it yet, but it seems it would add quite a bit to the "strategic-ness" of the four-player game, which, without teams, seems to get political and drag out...

Teams has some potential issues (there's a -lot- of first player
advantage there, as teams can work together to cause catastrophes,
etc), but could be fun.

>Two-player is the bestest, but my son crushes me fairly easily... :-)
>Has anyone found any good, scalable handicapping mechanisms? 

The best I've seen is constraining homeworld choice -- have the weaker
player start with Banker and the stronger start with Fortress.  Then again,
as Twoshort mentioned, Goldilocks, at least, gives an advantage to a
player playing against a weaker player.  The mechanics aren't really
subject to subtle handicapping, though one could do gross things like
starting someone with a medium ship instead of a large one -- that's
more or less death against even a moderate strength player, though.

>Sinister Homeworlds:  If the rule is "you win when you destroy the
>nation to your left", and I kill the player across the table, does
>the player to my left win the game?  If he doesn't win immediately,

He didn't kill the nation to his left, so he doesn't win.  If he kills
the nation which is now to his left, however, he wins.

So it's more or less "starting over", except, one hopes, that the
nation you killed made some progress in that direction.

-- 
       Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\      _,,,--,,_  ,)
--^--   "Did you know, if you increment enough, you   /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
 /\\    get an extra digit?"  "I knew," weeps Six.    |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\     
/-\\\   "We knew. But we had forgotten."	     '---''(_/--' (_/-'

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